


if we can't dance to it

by roadtripexpert



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: -Ish, A New Immortal?, AU - ACAB, Andy hopped on that Anarchist train and is never going back, Basically, Current Events, Dialogue Heavy, Domesticity, F/F, Found Family, Future Fic, M/M, Multi, POV Outsider, Police Brutality, Revolution, cause that's just how I roll bb, discussions of racism, in MY fanfic?, it's more likely that you think, very on-brand of me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:26:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26843593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roadtripexpert/pseuds/roadtripexpert
Summary: The gang starts a revolutionNile looks up, takes a deep breath. Then says: “You died.”Isa can’t say anything for a moment, then she yells into the hallway. “Mag, we’re going on a walk! I’ll share my location with you!”She doesn’t wait for an answer, merely takes Nile by the elbow, grabs two respirators and a baseball bat, and drags them out the door.Nile eyes her as Isa shoves the second mask in her direction. “What’s the bat for.”“Nazis. Let’s go.”
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 16
Kudos: 75





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is possibly the most self-indulgent thing I've ever written, please forgive me.

Someone is pounding on Isa’s door. And she has a headache. The headache makes sense. She puts two and two together and the door pounding begins to make sense as well. Isa stumbles out of bed and into the common area of her apartment, yelping a sorry to someone she’s positive she doesn’t know sleeping on an air mattress in the hallway.

Isa can hear her house-mates stirring, grumbling. 

“Jesus Christ,” Mag mumbles as they stagger into the kitchen, joining Isa as she flips on the light and stares at the door. “You think it’s…” 

Isa nods. “Okay,” Mag says, dragging a hand down their face. “Okay. Open it. We’ll pull together bail or something.”

Isa walks over to the door and opens it. There is a woman at her door, a tall black woman with braids pulled up into a non-nonsense bun. No badge. No standard cop civies. 

“You’re not the police,” Isa says, and leans on the doorframe. Then checks the hallway. “Oh, shit, do you want to come in? Are you being chased or something?”

The woman looks decently embarrassed at that assumption. “No, I’m fine. Sorry for knocking so loud. It’s been a long week. I didn’t realize it was so late.”

Isa can see the goggle marks on the woman’s face, and the same tired, fierce light that she’s been seeing on the street for months. 

“Yeah, you’re right. Come in. We’ll put some tea or coffee on. Fuck it.”

The woman smiles a bit at that and walks into Isa’s kitchen. “You expecting the police?”

Isa shakes her head and then her hands, as if itching at handcuffs already. “No. I don’t know. They’ve got a warrant out for basically anyone who's been out blocking the bridge.” 

“One of our friends got arrested recently on a warrant. So. We’re being careful,” Mag says, palms upturned. _What can you do._ Isa snorts, raises her eyebrows at them. _Plenty, probably._

“Sit, sit,” Isa says to their guest. “Look, my name’s Isa, this one’s Mag. What should we call you?”

“I’m Nile,” the woman says. 

“Great.” Isa claps her hands. “Great, beautiful. What can we do for you, Nile?” 

Nile clears her throat and looks down at the table and Isa feels the tingling in her legs she gets when someone is about to give her bad news. 

“I was hoping we could talk alone.” 

The bottom of Isa’s stomach drops. “Okay.”

Isa looks over at Mag, who shrugs. “Shout if you need me.” 

Isa sits down at the table, gingerly. “Alright.” 

Nile looks up, takes a deep breath. Then says: “You died.”

_Oh. So that’s how it’s going to be._

Isa can’t say anything for a moment, then she yells into the hallway. “Mag, we’re going on a walk! I’ll share my location with you!”

She doesn’t wait for an answer, merely takes Nile by the elbow, grabs two respirators and a baseball bat, and drags them out the door. 

Nile eyes her as Isa shoves the second mask in her direction. “What’s the bat for.”

“Nazis. Let’s go.” 

Isa nearly runs down the four sets of stairs to the ground floor, Nile close on her heels. By the time she gets outside the cool breeze is welcome. She stands in it for a moment, breathing hard. 

“You gonna talk to me?” Nile asks. She sounds a little unsure of herself. Isa turns to look at her. 

“I don’t know. Are you gonna rat me out to the government or something?”

“No.” Nile is dead serious. “Look, I know this is hard. It’s really hard. I—I wanted it to be me that told you.”

Isa attempts to parce that for any meaning, gives up, and starts walking. “Okay, I’ll bite,” she says over her shoulder, her heart pounding. “Tell me what.”

Nile appears at her elbow. “Hey, look at me,” Nile says. “This is important.” 

Isa, for a fleeting moment, has the urge to cry. That this younger woman is telling her something is important and meaning it. 

“We can’t die.”

Somehow Isa was expecting it. Not that the words necessarily made sense, but that they fit an expected pattern.

“Okay.”

“Just okay?” Nile’s lips quirk into a nervous smile. 

“Probably not,” Isa says. Then she sits down hard on the sidewalk. Nile joins her. 

“I died for the first time in Afghanistan,” Nile says, an uncertain hand on her knee. “It feels like decades ago.”

“How long has it been?” Isa asks. Somehow it feels important. 

“Six years.” 

“And you’ve died more times than just that.”

“More than I can count.”

“Okay. Well, I’ve counted three. Three deaths. For me.”

Nile makes a noise of surprise. “Really? Already?”

“Well, as soon as I figured I was getting a bit more lucky I started to make dumber moves. Jumping in front of riot gear and all that.” 

Nile nods. And maybe she looks a bit impressed this time. “You’ve got more questions.”

“No, I’ll just go home and sleep this off and never think about it again.” 

Nile looks momentarily panicked. 

“I’m joking. Of course I have fucking questions.”

“Would you mind coming back to my place and meeting some more people? People like us?”

Isa gives her a disgruntled look. “A second location? Sure. Fuck it. Why not.”

Nile winces. 

“I don’t know why I trust you, but somehow I do,” Isa says while she gets to her feet and offers a hand to Nile. 

“You dreamed about me, right?” Nile says with a quick grin, like it’s totally normal to know about other people’s dreams. 

They start walking. Isa texts Mag: _Not dead or kidnapped. Headed to Nile’s house to talk with her friends about strategy stuff. Please take care of whoever is sleeping in our hallway. Love you._

And then she’s off into the night. Off to meet an amorphous “us” whoever that may be.

Nile’s bike is hidden in an alley, and Isa ends up standing on the footholds on the back wheel as they swerve through the streets. People are still out and about. Isa keeps the bat over one of her shoulders as a warning.

They skid to a halt outside a small house in one of the nicer parts of town. This street hasn’t been so gentrified. The houses are the same as they were in the fifties, flat, half-brick and half sagging wood. It reminds Isa of her grandmother's house. 

Nile props the bike up against the fence and leads Isa around the back of the house, where a disheveled garden sits in bins, poking out of concrete and draping itself over a chain link fence.

Nile opens the back door, announcing herself as they make their way to the front of the house. 

There’s a man cooking in the kitchen who absentmindedly pats Nile on the arm as they go past. “Hello, Nile, you find her?” He’s speaking in an accent Isa can’t place. Maybe French, maybe Italian. 

“Ask her yourself.”

The man turns from the stove and his face breaks into a smile when he sees Isa. “Hello! It is lovely to meet you.” 

“Uh,” Isa says eloquently. “Nice to meet you too.” 

“Look, I am almost done with dinner and Joe is almost done patching up Andy. Sit down and we can get to your questions.”

“Thank you Nicky,” Nile says. There’s so much love in both of their voices. A warmth that Isa recognizes as familial. 

She’s pulled into the living room where a woman is draped over the couch being tended to by a man with a beard and a woman with dark eyes and long braided hair. Or, mostly the bearded man. The woman is sitting on the floor, her head against the injured woman’s feet.

Isa can see now why they went around the house. The front door is barricaded with several pieces of furniture. 

She looks at Nile and then back at the door.

“Long story,” Nile says.

“No it isn’t,” the woman on the couch says, wincing as the bearded man dabs hydrogen-peroxide on her cuts and scrapes. “Fucking pigs.”

Then, looking at Isa, the woman says, “Hey, I’m Andy.” Her grin is like a wolf’s, all teeth. Isa gets the sense that this is her pack, and if Isa ever did anything to hurt them she'd be deeply sorry.

“I’m Isa.”

“Isa’s a pretty name,” the woman at Andy’s legs says. She’s soft-spoken, something harder than steel beneath it. She wraps her hands around one of Andy’s ankles. “I’m Quynh.” 

“And this is Joe,” Andy says, hitting the bearded man in the chest. 

“Stop moving so much,” Joe says, laughing, “six years and you still don’t know how to act.” 

Andy sticks out her tongue.

When he looks up at Isa his eyes are crinkled and kind. “Hello, Isa. We didn’t mean to be so busy when you came.” With this comment he shoots a look at Andy and Quynh, who roll their eyes in unison. 

“It’s okay,” Isa says, shifting on her feet. “I like your garden.” 

“Really?” Joe says, a grin spreading across his face. “It’s the first one we’ve had in decades, but we’ve been sitting put the last few years because of this one.” He jerks his thumb at Andy. 

“Yeah, the squash looks good.”

Joe looks immensely pleased with himself. “Nicky should be using some of it in the pasta tonight.” 

Nile clears her throat. “He said we should sit down, dinner’s almost ready. And Isa’s got questions.”

“Join you in a bit,” Joe says, tearing a bandage with his mouth. 

The dining room is adjacent to the kitchen and living room. Isa can still hear their muffled voices. 

“You get used to them,” Nile says. “It’s a lot better than it used to be. Less moping around.”

They sit in semi-awkward silence after that. Isa is formulating exactly what questions to ask as Joe, Andy, and Quynh file into the kitchen laughing. 

Joe goes to help Nicky bring the plates in and soon Isa is eating the most delicious squash ravioli she’s ever had. 

“Jesus, this is good.” 

Nicky smiles softly. “Grazie mille.” 

Alright then. Italian accent it is. 

“Okay then,” Nile says, after they’ve all eaten their first bites. “I did the first part. And I’m glad I did. But I think you guys should take it from here.”

Andy rubs her hands together as if attempting to keep warm. “I guess it’s best to just...rip the bandaid off, isn’t it?” 

Everyone seems to have a differing opinion on that statement but they all keep their mouths shut. 

“So, you know that you can’t die, right?”

Isa gives her a jerky nod. 

“Great. Great. How old are you?”

“30.”

“Ha!” Nile says, punching the air. When everyone looks at her, she shrugs. “I’m not the baby anymore.” 

“It’s only two years,” Quynh says, looking extremely confused, “she knows two years is nothing right?” This time she looks at Andy for support.

“Hey,” Nile says, pointing at Quynh, “Let me have this.”

Isa looks at her appraisingly, and Nile chuckles. 

“Yeah, I know. My body’s still 26, but I turned 32 this November.”

“Your body….it doesn’t age.”

“No.”

“Oh. So...that’s the other part. I don’t die. I don’t age.”

“Until you do!” Andy says, looking cheery. Quynh slaps her on the arm and says something in what Isa thinks is Vietnamese. 

It’s Joe’s turn to roll his eyes. “Look. In the beginning it was Andy, then Quynh, then Lykon. They were together for a very long time. Then one day, Lykon’s wounds stopped healing, and he died. That’s what we mean when we say that one day, it just goes away.

“Our….immortality.”

“Correct.”

“And that’s what happened to you.” She looks at Andy. She nods. Looking a lot more pleased about it than anyone else at the table. 

“Don’t worry. I’ve lived a very long life.”

“How long?”

Her grin is sharper this time. Nile huffs out a laugh. “She won’t tell you.”

Andy’s smile turns mischievous and mocking. “Maybe I just don’t remember, has anyone ever thought of that?”

Her and Quynh devolve into multi-lingual squabbling again. 

“So, a long-ass time,” Isa says, trying to think about how old Andy would have to be for her to be happy about losing her immortality. There’s a falling sensation in her body. She’s positive that if she stood up she would lose her balance. 

“Nicky and I met in the crusades,” Joe says. 

“The crusades.” 

“That’s what I said!” Nile says, excited. “It’s insane, right! Thank god I have someone here who knows how insane that is.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Nicky says, deadpan. “We are all perfectly normal here.”

Quynh snorts, and Isa looks over to see that she’s climbed into Andy’s lap, her face buried in Andy’s neck. Andy looks at the table with a happiness that seems very new, shrugging _what can you do._

Nile whispers to Isa, “Quynh just recently returned to us a few years ago. So, they’re just like this.”

But Isa can’t stop being reminded of Mag shrugging in Isa’s kitchen. _Oh god_. Mag. 

“What am I going to tell people?” 

“You won’t,” Joe says calmly, steadily “It will be your secret, but it will also be our secret. We have suffered the consequences of it getting out. You have probably about twenty years left where you can be with the people you love before they get suspicious.”

Isa turns to Nile for support, because this is a little insane, and is surprised to see her tearing up. “Hey, are you okay?” 

Nile looks at her, a wipes her face hurriedly. “Yeah, yeah. No, it’s fine. I died. My mom and brother think I died. So. I can’t see them anymore.” 

“You could.” Isa knows she sounds panicked. 

Nile purses her lips. “I could, but Book—”

She trails off, eyes widening. Then she puts her head down on the table in defeat, her voice muffled by the wood. “I just wanted one day. I wanted to get through one day without him coming up. I know it puts everyone in a pissy mood.” 

“It’s okay, habibti,” Joe says softly, putting a hand on her head gently for a moment.

Quynh turns from her perch in Andy’s lap. “I thought Sebastien was fun.”

“That’s because he has a death wish and you're a death-wish's wet dream,” Andy mumbles into Quynh’s hair. 

“Who’s Sebastien?” Isa asks, feeling extremely out of her depth. 

“Booker,” Joe says, running a hand down his face and looking, suddenly, exhausted. “He...he’s in exile for turning us into lab rats.”

“Including himself,” Nicky says semi-diplomatically, although he doesn’t look too sorry about the exile part. 

“Ah, shit,” Nile says. “Do you think they should meet each other? You know, stop them from dreaming of each other?”

There’s a series of synchronized groans across the table. “Okay, maybe we’ll talk about that tomorrow. No Booker talk after dinner,” Nile says, like that’s the rule. Who knows, maybe it is. 

“So there’s just six of you?”

“Seven of us,” Joe says, and winks at her as he toasts with a glass of wine. 

She sleeps on a mattress on the floor in Nile’s room. Just like all the people rotating out of her apartment, listening to the sounds of the unfamiliar house around her.


	2. Chapter 2

_She dreams of a man. He’s on a houseboat. She knows the place stinks of alcohol even though she can’t smell. The man turns in his bed, which is filled with ancient-looking books, two PC computers, and a few empty bottles of liquor. Isa feels his seasickness, the loneliness like a perfume around him._

She wakes with the early-morning light filtering through the blinds. Nile is reading what looks to be an Arabic textbook in bed above her, and sends a soft smile her way.

“My first night with them, Joe and Nicky got kidnapped and I learned how fast Andy can kill twenty people by herself. So, last night wasn’t so bad was it?” 

Isa looks at her blearily to see if she’s joking. It doesn’t seem to be the case. 

Nile takes pity on her. “Come on, Joe makes the best pancakes.”

“Are there only two people in this house that can cook?”

Nile thinks about it for a second. “Technically Andy’s great at skinning and roasting anything, but the stove is still a mystery. Also, I can make toast.”

“Wait.” Isa swallows, as Nile moves towards the door. Her mouth is dry with sleep. “I don’t want to...ruin anything, or make anyone uncomfortable, but I think I saw Booker last night.”

Nile sucks on the side of her cheek. She looks like she’s resisting asking more information. “Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I...I just wouldn’t mention it to the rest of them. It’s still a sore spot. We can talk about it later if you want.”

“When is he allowed to come back?”

Nile grimaces. “94 years.”

“94 years.”

“Yeah. 100 years was the compromise.”

“The compromise,” Isa can hear herself repeating, faintly. She rallies. “I’m...going to stop repeating everything you say. Pancakes sound good.”

“Atta girl,” Nile says. 

Joe is indeed making pancakes, with Nicky hovering. “You’re backseat cooking,” Joe says, but he’s grinning. Nicky smirks at him and says something in Italian as he wraps himself around Joe, his chin on Joe’s shoulder. The point of which, Isa thinks, is to say: _no,_ this _is backseat cooking_. 

Joe laughs and kisses Nicky, then notices Nile and Isa. “My pancakes have awoken our guest, hayati.”

“Good morning Isa, Nile,” Nicky says as he extricates himself smoothly from Joe and starts setting the table. 

Isa waves awkwardly. She had assumed Andy and Quynh were a couple, but not Joe and Nicky for some reason. They certainly had a different standard for PDA. 

She whispers to Nile, “Are you like, constantly third wheeling.”

Nile gives her a grim nod. 

“Oh my god,” Isa says, mostly to herself, “eternal third-wheeling.”

“Not anymore,” Nile says, bumping her with an elbow. Isa manages a shy smile back at her.

They eat pancakes, and Isa is tempted to feel normal for a moment. Maybe it’s just another night at a friend’s house. She drank too much maybe, and ended up sleeping on their floor, but the whiteboard in her line of sight isn’t helping. In order, and in different sets of script, the board reads: 

  * _Call C about new immortal_


  * Andy’s supplies (+ protest first aid) (go bag?)


  * Weed?


  * New rendezvous spot? 



All of them seem to have been crossed out. Her life is a farce.

“Who’s C?” she asks through a mouth full of pancakes. 

“What?” Nile says, then follows her gaze. “Oh shit. What did I tell you guys about the whiteboard idea.”

Joe and Nicky look at each other. “I think it’s useful,” Joe says.

“Yeah, until we write one of our classified ops on there and someone sees it!” 

“We would never do that,” Nicky says. 

“I’m sorry Isa. We called to warn Copley, that’s who C is. He’s in charge of keeping us off the map. So, we thought it would be good to warn him about a potential addition.”

“Okay,” Isa says, feeling like maybe she shouldn’t be so calm about this. 

“The weed is for Andy. Chronic pain,” Joe says. “Turns out thousands of years really do catch up with you.”

“And here I was thinking you might be cool.” 

“Don’t worry,” Andy says from the doorway, her hair rumpled. “They all steal from my stash like delinquents.”

Nile squawks. 

“I still got eagle eyes, kid.”

“Yeah, it’s not like you’ve done every hard drug in existence.”

Andy gets a kind of wistful look in her eyes. “Sure did.” Then she seems to realize why they were talking about weed. “Wait, is this about the whiteboard? It’s a bad idea.” 

  
  


It turns out Nile, Nicky, Joe, Andy, and Quynh have been out on the frontlines of the protests for weeks now. 

“It’s kind of perfect,” Nile explains to Isa, her legs tucked up under her in one of the frankly, hideous but extremely comfortable armchairs that populate the living room. “It’s a real way to help right now, it’s the place I definitely need to be right now. Plus,” Nile says, grinning with her teeth bared, for a moment looking like the mirror image of Andy, “we’re really good at it by now. 2020 was one hell of an introduction to street-fighting for me. But it’s also not _too_ dangerous for Andy.” 

Isa nods. It makes sense. Everything this group does is calculated, almost graceful, from the way they move around each other to their strategies for making the world a better place.

“Don’t tell Andy that last bit though.” Nile sighs. “She knows, she just doesn’t like to be reminded. If it were up to her we would be doing trafficking raids right now.”

“So that’s the stuff you guys usually do?”

“Sometimes,” Nile shrugs. “They were resistance fighters during WWII, so they’re definitely not anxious to see the rise of fascism in the US.”

“They might have known my great-great grandmother.” Isa knows she sounds a little awed. She can’t help it.

Nile smiles at her. 

“What?”

“It’s that feeling, isn’t it,” Nile says, “the _this is so fucking cool_ feeling. I got it when they talked about fighting for the Union in the Civil War.” 

“Yeah,” Isa laughs. “I guess it is that feeling.”

“Honestly, there’s not much that’s consistent with us except for the fact that we’re trying to do good. And we go for the neck. No politics.”

Isa nods. It seems fitting. They’re warriors of a sort, she can tell, and it tracks with her own worldview, that sometimes slow progress kills more people than quick progress ever will. “That makes sense. I mean...they’ve been on the right side of history so far.”

“Generally,” Nile says, then winces. “I mean, you can talk to Nicky about it, I did, but he was a crusader, right? Like, sacking Jerusalem. So, of course he had a lot of guilt about that after, especially because of Joe.”

“Oh. Oh, I hadn’t even thought...of course they were on opposite sides. Jesus. That’s kind of some crazy meet-cute shit.”

Nile raises her eyebrows. Isa just shrugs. It’s insane, and she can say whatever bat-shit things she wants to say about it, because the crusades were almost a thousand years ago.

“Okay. So, not always the right side of history. But...the way they can see history, I am insanely jealous. The understanding they must have of how war happens and where to be to make the most difference.”

“Yeah,” Nile says. “Which is why Nicky talked to me about Afghanistan I couldn’t just brush it off.”

Isa leans forward, trying to telegraph to Nile that she’s paying attention. Nile sends a weak smile her way. 

“I know it wasn’t entirely my fault. It was in my family, that’s how they convince you, it’s the only thing that makes sense. My father died while serving, and there didn’t seem to be many more options for me. South side of Chicago. But it doesn’t change that it wasn’t right, or that it didn’t solve anything.” 

Isa can only nod. She knows too many people from her high school who got chewed up and spat out by the military industrial complex. 

“So you all died...in war, in battle, right?”

Nile nods. 

“Huh,” Isa says. 

Nile doesn’t say anything, apparently content to let Isa sit in her questions for a bit. 

Nicky pops his head into the room. “We are getting ready for today, if you would like to join us. Isa, we can probably find you some gear.”

Andy’s taking her shirt off in the kitchen. 

Isa imagines that boundaries disappear after the first couple centuries. Nile is rolling her eyes. 

“I swear to God Andy, it’s like you try to make people uncomfortable.”

Andy doesn’t justify this with a response, merely flicks the lid off of what Nile thinks is Tiger Balm and tosses it to Nile. “Yeah, and you’re going to get my back.”

“Yeah, I am,” Nile says, fond, and Isa knows love like that, love with no questions, just a deep and endless fear of losing it.

“Quynh?” Nile asks, as she spreads the orange paste over Andy’s shoulders and lower back. 

Andy shakes her head. “Off day. I got her to eat and drink something but that’s probably it for today.”

The rest of the team seems to take it in stride.

Joe and Nicky are standing over a map of the city district. Joe is listening in on what Isa assumes is a local police scanner, and pointing to Nicky places on the map to circle. 

Isa feels a bit like she’s drifting. 

“Hey,” Nile says, she’s done helping Andy and is washing her hands in the sink. “Let’s get you some stuff to wear.”

The basement is, as it turns out, an armory. 

Of course. 

“Are you going to bring any of this today?” Isa asks, gesturing towards the guns, which are on the wall next to a bunch of truly mythic looking medieval weapons. 

Nile nods. “We each bring a gun, conceal carry is legal here, but you don’t need to.”

“Yep. Cool. I won’t.”

“That’s okay, but don’t be worried, we’ve all had way too much experience for it to be dangerous.”

Isa swallows. Logically she knows this to be true. Her hand goes to her side, where a bullet lodged itself almost six days ago, and resists the urge to vomit. 

“Hah!” Nile says, apparently finding what she was searching for. She hands Isa some knee and elbow pads, and a tactical vest. It looks like generally what Isa has been wearing for the last few weeks. “It’s mostly to blend in,” Nile says with a shrug, “and also because there’s no need to be shot even if we can come back from it.” 

“Also, I’m guessing if you guys wear them, Andy doesn’t feel weird about it?”

“Yeah. Yeah, you’ve got it. And you can wear one of the gas-masks you brought from your place. One of the things we’re not great at getting out of our system is chemical weapons.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Isa says dryly, as they trek back up the stairs. 

By the time they're back Joe and Nicky are wearing medic gear, and Joe is patching up the red duct tape cross on his helmet. 

“Ready team?” Andy says.

Isa feels a kind of settling sensation, where the absurd normalcy of her life meets the normal absurd. “Sure,” she says. “Why not.”

Mag texts her when they’re half-way to the agreed upon meet-up spot for today’s protest. 

_you on your way?_

She replies: _yeah, with Nile+her friends, meet u there_

She had almost forgotten about the outside world for a moment, in that house, with these strangers. The sinking sensation is back.

“Wanna meet the person I’m not supposed to tell any of this to?” Isa says, aiming for flippant and coming across as a bit bitter. She winces. 

Andy puts a hand on her shoulder. “We’d like to very much.”

  
  


Mag puts up their hand when they reach the square, waving to Isa like someone might wave to a ship coming in. Isa swallows her guilt. 

“Mag! Meet the people who stole me last night!”

Joe, Nicky, and Nile introduce themselves, then Andy with her teeth bared again, and Mag makes small talk telling them about the general consensus on the crowd that night. 

Then they pull Isa aside. 

“What did they want to tell you?”

“Nothing. It was a misunderstanding. Nile thought I knew someone she knew who had been hurt. Then we started talking about the protests and I ended up at their house.”

Mag nods and drops it, then grins, “You in love or something? You’re acting strange.”

 _No, worse,_ Isa thinks, then says, “What? No! Oh my god. Just had a long night.”

“Whatever you say.”

There are a few speeches. The crowd moves restlessly, the cops lined up a block away in riot gear already. There’s talk moving through the gathering in a ripple of a plan to take a nearby park and turn it into an encampment for house-less people. The call comes out of megaphones: they’re marching. 

Joe and Nicky separate themselves from the group in order to help the front of the march avoid any kind of ambush by the police. The sun is still out. It’ll be a few hours before things really get out of hand. Isa feels the anticipation of moving with this large group in her bones, just as she does every time. The feeling of being part of something larger and more terrifying than she could have ever imagined. 

She falls into a rhythm beside Mag and Nile, Andy is taking point, constantly vigilant. Isa knows she’s probably thinking about the far-right militias that telegraphed their intent to be there tonight over Facebook. They talked about it on the walk over when Isa noticed the way Andy seemed to look in every direction at once. 

“Quynh would kill her if she got shot again,” Nile said to Isa in tones low enough just for them.

“When was the first time?”

Nile grimaced. “Booker.”

“What?”

Nile nodded. 

“And never after?”

“We make surprisingly good human shields,” Nile said with a touch of humor.

By the time they get to the park near downtown, Isa’s voice is hoarse from shouting, and her legs burn. The sun is also setting. She can see everyone’s shoulders squaring. Go time.

Isa watches as a few organizers talk to the few house-less people already set up in the park, asking their names and if they need anything. She watches the cops watch this too, watches a few men in flag apparel with guns talk to them. 

There are rarely any precursors anymore. A few years ago it was decided by most cities and even smaller towns that their curfews would be entirely at the hands of the police, and there was nothing Isa could do about that. So, no warnings, no megaphones coming from tanks. Plus, the National Guard left a week ago, _going to greener pastures_ , Isa thinks darkly. 

There are no precursors, but it doesn’t mean it surprises her when the police start surging into the crowd. 

It’s not chaos. Isa stopped thinking about it that way years ago. It’s organized violence, and she grits her teeth against it as she joins the others in a barricade against the onslaught. The respirator goes on as tear gas canisters whizz in close proximity. The leaf blowers start up. 

Not chaos. Just what might approximate a revolution against the state’s monopoly on violence. 

When she goes down she’s not ready, but she’s not surprised. She hits her head hard, somehow her helmet slipped off and she’s on the ground, her eyes making an effort to focus again. Something about it makes her gag with fear, she’s pretty sure her neck isn’t in its rightful place. She can hear, can’t see, the rest of the world has coalesced into a whining whir. 

_Isa is laying on the road with her head cracked open. There are people around her trying to lift her, yelling. People yelling not to lift her. The sound of fireworks and gas canisters fly around in her brain like tin cans. It’s all she can focus on. That and the fact her head feels like a pumpkin that’s spilled its guts all over the concrete. She doesn’t want to move, but all she can do is sob and hope that whatever she can see splattered in front of her isn’t her own brain isn’t her own life running away from her_

_Isa is losing her breath in the tear gas, her lungs working overtime because there is someone on top of her and she can’t get up, she can’t and it’s the most panicked she’s been in so long because what if the magic trick of her first death doesn’t work again and what if_

_Isa is losing blood so fast she doesn’t realize she’s been shot at first. And then it’s much too late to do anything, not even feel the blood leave her body. Or she is trying to forget the feeling of her blood leaving her body. There is shouting again, a woman screaming, screaming_

This time the voices aren’t panicked. “Up you get,” Joe says, a hand under her armpit and on her back as she comes back to herself. “There you go, the first few deaths are the hardest.” They’re on her every side, flanking her as they move together through the crowd. 

“You good?” Nile asks.

“Yeah,” Isa blinks, surprised and somewhat embarrassed to find tears working their way down her cheeks. “Yeah, I am. I really am.” 

And for the first time since she died for the first time, she actually believes it. 


	3. Chapter 3

It’s close to one o’clock when Isa separates herself from the rest of the immortals to go chase down Mag, who she sees leaving. She can tell Mag is upset. Probably about Isa running off with new people all night. 

Isa’s tears from a few hours ago feel dangerously close to the surface.

“Long night,” Mag says, cautiously, as Isa runs up besides them. It’s half-question, half-accusation.

“Yeah,” Isa says, furiously swiping the tears off of her face. She looks so much like a goddamn amateur she almost laughs at herself. 

She has a briefly flashing fear of being photographed and put on one of those online forums where far-right militias jerk off to ‘antifa meltdowns’. Then, calmly, she reminds herself that the immortal warriors she was eating breakfast with this morning have a tech-guy, who would apparently never let such a thing happen. 

“Did you get into like...a cult?” Mag asks, and they look like they’re only somewhat joking. “I saw how closely they were with you. I mean, did you sign something?”

“No,” she says. And she didn’t. Just ate pancakes and learned she was immortal. No biggie. 

Mag’s not buying it, frowning. “We’re going to get you home and get some tea into you, babe.”

Isa hesitates, and Mag puts both their hands on Isa’s shoulders. 

“I’m asking you to come home, Isa.” Mag says.

“Yeah,” Isa says, sniffing “okay.”

Mag waves their hand at the scrabble behind them. “Go, you should make sure they’re safe before we go.” 

Isa jogs back. People are dispersing. The smoke from fireworks and tear gas fog up her goggles, but she finds them. Nile and Joe are helping someone up into a sitting position and staunching the blood coming from their head. 

Isa kneels down, offering assistance, but they seem to have it covered. Isa looks around, not wanting to disrupt them. She spots Andy, flanked by Nicky, absolutely cutting a path through the protest in order to stop some cops from trampling some of the tents at the center of the park.

Isa follows her. She watches, crouched by a tree, as Andy steps in front of the cops and Nicky angles himself in front of her. The cops pause, there are two of them, but Andy and Nicky’s gear look about match to theirs. They look like they want to start something but don’t. Isa bets it’s something in Andy’s eyes. That and the fighters stance both of them have. 

Isa jogs up to Andy once the cops are far enough away.

“I’m going home,” she says, feeling a bit guilty about it, as Andy looks her up and down. “With Mag. I just wanted to check up on everyone, see that you’re going to get home...safe.”

Now she feels like she’s accidentally going to offend Andy by only checking up on her. 

Nicky puts a hand on Isa’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’re always here for you. Just come by if you need anything.”

Andy looks like she wants to say more, there’s a twist to her mouth that speaks of a deep impulse to argue, but refrains from doing so.

“Okay,” Isa says, somewhat awkwardly, her arms hanging like pendulums at her side, she attempts a half-wave, and runs back towards Mag. 

Isa sleeps for two days. Every time she wakes a the weight of the last few days threatens to crush her. So, she lies in bed, unable to confront whatever mess she’s beginning to make of her life. She contemplates a lot of things. Some are old friends. Others are new, for example, going to Temple, which she hasn’t done since she still wore skirts. Or calling her mom. She’s not sure she even has her mother’s number. Just that thought sends her spiraling again. 

Rebecca, Mag’s girlfriend, brings her meals when Mag is at work, just as Isa did for her when she was sick for the entirety of 2024. It’s what Isa’s people do for her, and what she does for them. She languishes in the terror of outliving them. 

Mag pulls her out of bed on the third day, Isa beating her fists across their chest until they’re wrestling on the warped floorboards to shrieking. Mag always knows. 

She spends the whole day on a picnic with Mag and Rebecca, Isa’s head in Rebecca’s lap, soaking in the early-fall sun, watching the rest of the world move as if through a barrier, the kids leaping through water fountains while their mothers and aunties watch. The couples reading together. The gatherings with their bottles of wine, their blunts, the music blaring in the distance. 

She closes her eyes and doesn’t cry. 

That night she creeps out of her apartment and walks over to The House. She’s begun capitalizing it, it feels almost mythic after two days in the fog of her own mind. 

It’s almost two in the morning. She didn’t go so late for the express purpose of sneaking in and not having to talk to anyone, but it was becoming an unexpected bonus. 

She just wants her bat back. 

The key is under the mat in the front, and the door is no longer barricaded (as per Nile’s most recent, unanswered text). Isa lets herself in slowly, then attempts to make a beeline to where her bat is leaning up against the wall.

“Isa,” someone’s quiet voice says. Isa turns abruptly, feeling caught. Quynh is wrapped in a grungy-looking duvet blowing on a mug of what Isa’s pretty sure is saké and reading what appears to be Twilight. 

Quynh’s expression is at a practiced neutral. Isa pauses for a moment, weighing her options, then nods to the book in Quynh’s lap.

“Are you doing a book club or something?” 

Quynh wrinkles her nose. “No. Nile gave me a list of books I should read to catch up with pop culture, but I’m beginning to think this one was some kind of joke.” 

“Yeah,” Isa says, weakly. “Maybe.”

Quynh takes a sip of her drink and turns back to her book, rapt, apparently content to let Isa do whatever she wants. 

“Look,” Isa says, uncomfortable. “I left my bat here, that’s why I…” 

Fuck trailing off. She sounds like a kid. She sounds so young.

Quynh looks back at her. “No one will ever tell you what to do here, Isa.”

“Okay,” Isa says. 

“I thought there would be rules too, when I got back,” Quynh says, looking back at her book but not reading it this time, just starring. “I wasn’t really in my right mind, but I thought that they would trap me, that I wouldn’t be able to recover, or be who I was, that I would become  _ them. _ Or become Andy.” 

Isa treads softly across the carpet and sits down opposite of Quynh. “But you didn’t,” she half-asks, half-intuits. “Lose yourself.”

Quynh shakes her head with a slow smile. “No,” she agrees. “I didn’t.”

Isa hears the implied  _ “and you won’t either.”  _ Isa has almost no conception of what Quynh went through to need an update on pop-culture from the early 2000s, and doesn’t ask, just sits there. Quynh offers her a sip of her saké and Isa takes it.

“Can we get sick?” She asks Quynh, thinking, as she always does when sharing food and drink, about the recent years when she couldn’t. 

Quynh tilts her head like she’s thinking, or maybe remembering. “Yes. But we’re not contagious. And it can’t kill us. Doesn’t mean it isn’t very unpleasant.”

“Glad to know we aren’t fucking superhuman.”

Quynh nods. Isa hands the mug back to her.

“It’s not always like this,” Quynh says, calmly. “The last few years have been quiet. And I can feel that. It’s been good, even with all this terror on the horizon.” 

Isa says nothing. 

“It’s not always good, I’m trying to let you know that.” Isa gets the feeling Quynh is trying to warn her. “I drowned in a coffin under the sea for decades. If I ever figured out exactly how many times I died I think I would lose my mind.” 

She says it with such conviction, clutching her mug. She looks up at Isa with eyes like deep sea caves, with eyes that say that Isa can run far far away and never come back, that Quynh wouldn’t blame her.

All Isa feels is deep sorrow worming it’s way like ice through her body for what this woman has gone through. 

“You’re not a runner, are you,” Quynh says, the intensity of her look abating. 

Isa shakes her head. 

Quynh just nods. 

Isa likes this about Quynh, how she doesn’t seem to make any judgements about Isa’s choices. That she makes it known that there are options. 

She passes the saké to Isa again. 

They stay like that for a very long time, taking turns until the mug is empty. Then they sit for another bit, in what Isa thinks is companionable silence until she realizes that Quynh is no longer with her in that sense. Quynh’s eyes have turned dull and Isa has to half-drag her onto the couch before covering her with the duvet. She isn’t asleep, but she doesn’t say anything as Isa turns out the last lamp, grabs her bat, and slips out the front door. 

Her first sign that something is wrong is the light pouring out from under her apartment door. The second is what sounds like arguing, and a voice she doesn’t recognize. She opens the door with the bat raised. 

Mag is standing in the doorway of the hallway, surreptitiously blocking the hallway to where Rebecca is probably still sleeping. Finishing an exasperated:

“just isn’t here. I don’t know where—” they trail off as Isa enters. “Great,” they say, and don’t sound like they mean it. They gesture to a man sitting at their kitchen table, his head in his hands. 

He looks up from them at Isa, and Isa has to fight to urge to jerk back. It’s Booker. 

Perfect. Just how she wanted her night to end. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a bit of a shorter chapter. But...the plot arrives? Honestly we shall see where this goes. Sorry for the cliffhanger, I've got a bit ahead written so don't worry.

**Author's Note:**

> I chose a six-year time gap because I want to see the Guard at their happiest. Andy at her snarkiest, most-in-love self. Nile as part of the family. Let me know what you think. Comments are the fucking best.


End file.
